I shared a vagrant optimism

Hunter S. Thompson —”I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I felt that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between those two poles…a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other…that kept me going.”

Sylvia Plath — “Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”

Charles Bukowski — “And remember this: the page you are looking at now, I once typed the words with care with you in mind under a yellow light with the radio on.”

Haruki Murakami — “What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that’s not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.”

Toni Morrison — “And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth.”

Jack Kerouac — “Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”

 

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Reading is good for you

 

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Belief and Technique by Jack Kerouac

 

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Bookstore Tourism Philadelphia

It took a big leap of faith for the New York City bookshop Shakespeare & Co to open a branch in the high rent Philadelphia Center City Rittenhouse Square neighborhood two years ago. Somehow they’ve managed to hang on during these crazy times and are open again. If you are in Philly, it’s well worth a visit to this small, but very stylish bookstore. Their inventory is well curated and the in-house café is quite good too.

 

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Welcome to Planet Word

Last week a long-awaited new museum opened in Washington, D.C. that will be a must-see destination for readers and language lovers. Planet Word is promoted as “a revolutionary museum dedicated to the power, beauty, and fun of language and to showing how words shape the human experience.”

 The  museum’s press release notes, “Planet Word will be the world’s first voice-activated museum, featuring immersive galleries and exhibits that will engage visitors of all ages in experiencing words and language from a wide range of perspectives.” Planet Word is housed at DC’s historic Franklin School building, which has been rehabilitated and beautifully restored. Thanks to efforts led by Planet Word’s CEO and founder Ann B. Friedman, general admission will be free.

You can check-out what to expect from the museum’s interactive exhibits here. They include “Where Do Words Come From?,” a 22-foot-tall talking word wall that shares the story of the English language, “Word Worlds,” which allows visitors to transform a room with color, sound, and motion by painting with words, and “Words Matter,” where visitors can record and listen to stories about how the power of words has shaped their lives.

I usually visit DC at least once a year, so I look forward to seeing Planet Word when the world returns to normal. Until then, I’ll be following the museum’s progress on social media (TwitterFacebookInstagram) .

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Into the Haunted Looking Glass

The Haunted Looking Glass is the late Edward Gorey’s selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on. It includes stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and L. P. Hartley, among other masters of the fine art of making the flesh creep, all accompanied by Gorey’s inimitable illustrations. In 1959, Gorey selected 12 classic horror tales for this delightfully eerie anthology, which stands on its own merits as a historical introduction to the genre. This delightfully weird anthology by the neo-Victorian Surrealist illustrator was originally published by Random House, and release in later hardcover and paperback editions by other publishers.

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, “The Empty House”
W.F. HARVEY, “August Heat”
CHARLES DICKENS, “The Signalman”
L.P. HARTLEY, “A Visitor from Down Under”
R.H. MALDEN, “The Thirteenth Tree”
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, “The Body-Snatcher”
E. NESBIT, “Man-Size in Marble”
BRAM STOKER, “The Judge’s House”
TOM HOOD, “The Shadow of a Shade”
W.W. JACOBS, “The Monkey’s Paw,”
WILKIE COLLINS, “The Dream Woman”
M.R. JAMES, “Casting the Runes”

 

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Capturing Zeitgeist

Artist and graphic novelist Christopher Sperandio has perfectly captured the mood of the United States as we creep up to the abyss with this terrific series of cartoons. You can check out his last graphic novel at arglebarglebooks.com/product/pink-joe

 

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Writers Not Writing

Vonnegut waiting for a lift

Albert Camus dancing

Nabakov chasing butterflies

Charles Bukowski mowing the lawn

Hemingway playing kick the can

Orwell fondling his sword

Burroughs getting wasted at his 69th birthday bash

 

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Climactic Moments in Literature

©Kate Gavino

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Modern and Vintage too

If you have ever spent any time browsing secondhand bookstores or used book markets, it’s quite likely that you have run across many editions from the old Modern Library series. Founded in 1917, the Modern Library was eventually subsumed by Random House, which launched a terrific paperback line for the imprint. This vintage matchbook advertises the publications with classic book spine titles.

 

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